A quick post today for the 1 month anniversiary of Cartastrophe. Most of you have probably already seen this map make the rounds of the cartography blogs during the last couple of days, but it’s worth reposting.

Issues of accuracy aside, my question is why do they use that satellite photomosaic as the background? There’s no call for it – a simple solid fill would work better, and would be less distracting to the eye for a map that’s likely being flashed on the screen for a handful of seconds. It’s needlessly cool and fancy.

Also, Iran is set in much larger type than everything else. I think Israel might actually also be a bit larger than the other countries, despite being the smallest one marked on the map.

One Nice Thing: They did highlight countries of interest to the news story.